


fear of loss

by braigwen_s



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 14:42:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/braigwen_s/pseuds/braigwen_s
Summary: When Lin was twenty-three, she gave in and agreed to try for a baby.
Relationships: Kya II & Tenzin (Avatar), Lin Beifong & Kya II, Lin Beifong/Tenzin
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	fear of loss

**Author's Note:**

> This is a personal headcanon that I've kept for some time - and formatted less like most of my other fics, as such. It's close to my heart, for a number of reasons.

When Lin was twenty-three, she gave in and agreed to try for a baby. A few weeks later, she was late, but her menses had always been somewhat irregular, so she wasn’t certain she’d conceived. She went to Kya instead of Katara, because she was _not_ going to approach the mother of an Airbender with all that was at stake here, and if she decided to terminate (which she had considered in the past, in a ‘don’t-have-to-tell-Tenzin-just-say-I-didn’t-conceive’ way, as a possibility), she was not going to have Katara be aware of it, let alone have to be the one to follow through.

Kya did her thing, and confirmed, excited but also sympathetic to her complicated emotions about it (she’s a gay woman the daughter of the Last Airbender, she Understands) that she was pregnant.

Lin put off telling Tenzin for as long as she could, because she was so terrified about everything, and needed to be able to tell herself she could back out. She still hadn’t told him in her ninth week, which was when she miscarried. It was just as it was forming organs and becoming Recognizably Humanoid, which _killed_ her.

She was at work, the same as usual. She’d been staying slightly back in the battles, not because she was hampered yet, but because it was logical, skilfully managing to pass it off as growing more adept at leadership – she was Captain, and obviously slated for Chief after Toph’s successor, a man called Kuhn, retired.

She excused herself immediately after a particularly gory fight, as she was Feeling Unwell, and nobody exactly tells the feverish-looking Captain covered in “the perp’s” (her own) blood to sign out properly. She paid the ferry driver to gun it, and once she got to the island raced, doubled-over in pain, to Kya – just in time for the Tiny-Humanish-Looking-Bit to pass.

She was violently ill and violently upset, and felt so, so guilty for also being so _relieved_.

Tenzin knocked on the door a few hours later, and hesitantly said that he heard (from acolytes) that she’d come to see Kya around noon and wasn’t looking very well, so he wanted to ask if she was alright. Kya looked at Lin, silently saying it was her call, and Lin lied. She said she was hurt in a scuffle at work, and that it was nothing serious. It didn’t take Tenzin long to figure out she hadn’t told him the truth, or at least the whole truth, but his mother raised him right and he didn’t press her.

After Aang died, and they were already falling apart, she told him. They were furiously shouting at each other, and she said “I don’t even know if I can_ have_ children, Tenzin, I conceived once and then miscarried!”

Tenzin lost his utter shit, because “You _what_? Why did you _never tell me_?”

“Because I didn’t want to let you down! The same way I’m letting you down right now!”

He tried to express how sorry he was, that that happened to her, but she shouted that she didn’t need his pity, and hit him, once, on the cheek. It was the only time one of them ever struck the other on purpose, outside of sparring.

Just a few weeks later, the entire mess with Pema happened.

As it was, though, Tenzin stumbled into Kya’s room, his cheek stinging and bleeding. (The irony was lost on him, just then, but he realized later that she’d made two perfect nail-tracks across his jawline.) Kya freaked out:

“I knew things were bad, but she actually_ hit_ you? Has this happened before? Are you alright? I’d never believe it of Lin – here, sit _still_, let me heal you!”

Tenzin said, his voice hollow and shocked, “she miscarried. She told me.” Kya let her little brother sob himself out in her arms. Ever the healer and the daughter of the world’s best obgyn, she tried to follow up with Lin that evening. Lin was nowhere to be found, having run off to some distant corner of the Island because she needed space and fresh air and the hard comfort of the earth.

Tenzin never told Pema any of this. It wasn’t his to tell, and he recognised that fact.

**Author's Note:**

> You know the drill, toss a comment to your author.


End file.
